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Some Real Good Quotes

Feasting at the Table

"'Feminist,' it seems, has ended up in the same syntactical purgatory as
another once-useful, now-reviled term: liberal. Most people endorse
what that word has historically stood for — integration, child labor
laws, product safety — yet they treat the word itself like anthrax.
Similarly, while it's hard to imagine any young woman really wants to
return to the days of barefoot, pregnant and making meatloaf, many now
disdain the banner under which their gender fought for freedom. They
scorn feminism even as they feast at a table feminism prepared." [complete article]

Reading Surveys With Awful Results
Are Not New

"One of our universities recently made a survey of the reading habits of
the American public; it decided that forty-eight percent of all
Americans read, during a year, no book at all. I picture to myself that
reader — non-reader, rather; one man out of every two — and I reflect,
with shame: 'Our poems are too hard for him.' But so, too, are Treasure
Island,Peter Rabbit, pornographic novels — any book whatsoever. The
authors of the world have been engaged in a sort of conspiracy to drive
this American away from books; have in 77 million out of 160 million
cases, succeeded. A sort of dream situation often occurs to me in which
I call to this imaginary figure, 'Why don't you read books?' — and he
always answers, after looking at me steadily for a long time: 'Huh?'

Ordinary Words

The prime minister's final flourish, "Honor your country, for the
eyes of the country are upon you," complete with drumrolls and bugle
blasts unearthed from the attics of the mustiest of national
rhetoric, was ruined by a "Good night" that rang entirely false, but
then that is the great thing about ordinary words, they are incapable
of deceit.